Original leaf from a manuscript prayer book. Written on fine hand-made laid paper, in miniscule and precisely elegant Maghrebi script in brown, red, and blue ink. (115 x 110 mm – 4 ½ x 4 3/8’’)
Morocco, c. 1791 (AH 1202)
Large multi-line heading in gold on a red ground surrounded by a gold bar. The heading extends into the margin with a stylized medallion in gold, red & blue.
From a manuscript book of the Dala’il al-Khayrat (Guide to Good Deeds) – Scribed and dated AH 1202 by the famous Moroccan calligrapher Ahman ibn Muhammad al-Rabati, who was appointed to the court of the Alawite Sultan Mawlay Sulayman as a teacher to Prince ‘Abd al-Rahman. During this time he composed a well-known treatise on the art and technique of calligraphy.
“The Maghrib, the western part of the Islamic empire (which includes all the Arab countries west of Egypt and until 1492 also parts of Spain), evolved its own distinct form of Islamic art, and, with it, calligraphy...” (Ref: Gaur, A History of Calligraphy, p. 96).
For Islam, calligraphy is the queen of the arts. Everything is subservient to the Word. The best artists became adept not in reproducing, say, the human form or landscape, but rather in illuminating God’s Word” (Smithsonian Book of Books, p.52)
Presented in an archival 12 x 9'' mat
